Zombieing, When Whoever Left Us Without Saying Anything “comes Back To Life “

In recent years, we have become familiar with terms such as ghosting (disappearing from someone’s emotional life without explanation) or orbiting (cutting off a relationship with a person, but continuing to interact with them through social networks). Now, it seems that now we are “almost forced” to add a new word to this list: zombieing.

Regardless of whether we more or less like this series of Anglo-Saxon nouns, there is an undeniable fact. Naming these phenomena closely linked to the world of new technologies is already a necessity, because these media have changed our way of relating and, above all, of building (and destroying) our relationships as a couple and also friendships.

Zombieing defines a type of behavior that may be familiar to us: it refers to that person who ghosted us and who miraculously “comes back to life.” It also does it through a text message, a simple WhatsApp or a comment on our social networks. Someone, whom we considered missing, returns once again to our present with total normality and with a purpose: to revive the relationship.

Beyond the singular (or bizarre), the term zombie does not stop reflecting a reality that occurs too often. And what is worse, these dynamics generate great suffering.

If the fact of having to assume the inexplicable disappearance of a person to whom we were emotionally attached is already hard, facing his return puts the person at a very peculiar crossroads.

Let’s dive into it next.

Zombieing , the return of the one who left without saying goodbye

You are immersed in your work, in a moment of leisure with friends or, even more, sharing life with your current partner and suddenly it happens. We receive a notification on the mobile, we take a look and there it is.

Someone who was important to us and who decided to stop responding, without there being a reason for us, returns to our present with a joyous holiday, with innocence and even with subtle charm.

He does it, generally, through some very common phrases, such as: «Hello, how are you? How is everything going? I miss you » ,« Hello, I have seen you in your Instagram photos; you look great. Would you like to meet for a drink? ». When this happens to us in the first person we are experiencing what is known as Zombieing,  a term coined in 2016.

Likewise, these 21st-century zombies have the unusual, and almost supernatural ability, to come back just when we’ve gotten over the grief over their absence. We have rebuilt our life with emotional bandages, with dressings and stitches trying to heal the wound for its lack, for that ghosting that left us almost fractured and, suddenly … There is a knock at the door.

What do you do in these situations? What’s more … what kind of profile is behind the zombieing phenomenon ? 

Seekers of fuel for your ego

The person accustomed to practicing zombieing (behavior that occurs equally in both men and women) does not make his stellar appearance on Halloween.

The real zombie actually emerges when he’s hungry. His eagerness to nurture his famished ego causes him to seek the contact of the one who, at a given moment, gave him what he needed most: admiration, affection and attention.

We could label them as narcissists. Also as immature and lacking empathy people. However, multiple processes actually converge in this type of behavior. One of them is the fragility of relationships. It is not necessary to have any personality disorder, rather than resorting to the clinical area we must see it as a social behavior, an increasingly widespread pattern.

Whoever left one day for no reason does not need any excuse to return. He does it because he does not value ties or relationships, because he does not weigh his conscience or see any problem in his behavior. For those who used to be a ghost and now come back turned into a zombie, everything flows and moves according to desires and needs. Love is disposable, it is used, it is thrown away and it can even be recycled if you want.

If that ex-partner comes back into our life after a while after leaving us, he does it basically to reinforce his ego and because surely, his immediate reality is not very stimulating. He needs new reinforcements and therefore expects us to nurture him as we did before.

When faced with zombieing , it is best not to open the door

Suffering from zombieing often puts us in a difficult situation. The wounds open again, the balance that we had achieved after that absence is altered and, above all, rage and surprise appear. Because these people who return to our lives do so fresh and shiny, seeking to attract our attention … as if nothing had happened.

What should we do in these circumstances? First, be cautious. We must not lose perspective, no matter how tempted we feel when reading those messages, those audios, those invitations that evoke days and moments gone by. Because his return is never accidental or innocuous, the zombie always demands something, always returns hungry and is skilled at opening already healed scars.

If having experienced ghosting should be of any use, it is to avoid letting something like this happen to us again. Love is not about ghosts or zombies; Any relationship that hurts, hurts and extorts is not real, we do not deserve it and it is better to establish distance.

Thus, the best thing to do is to ignore these messages, block their entry into our lives and protect, above all, the sacred territory of our hearts.